Best New Creative Nonfiction: We May Win This Thing by Angela Townsend

We May Win This Thing

by Angela Townsend

I decided to become a sports fan. There was no gap between the announcement and the achievement. There was no waiting period. Nobody asked why I showed up at age forty-five instead of five. I was not asked for employment references, baptismal records, or “new patient” registration forms. I was not asked for anything. That is why I decided to become a sports fan.

I decided to become a sports fan, though my legs are as wobbly as noodles. My athletic career ended in travesty, back when I wore a Li’l Lions jersey for the six-to-ten softball league. It was a playoff game, bases loaded. A live ball landed at my feet. All I had to do was pick it up and lob it infield. We would survive to face the Wee Vikes. Our sponsors at Colandrea Pizza would lavish us with complimentary calzones, like heroes of old.

But I was ravished by the sunset, with my back turned to the field. I had my reasons. The sky was outrageous in hibiscus and violet. I gaped at cherubim over the bleachers while all the Ragin’ Ravens made it home. Normally, fatherly coaches screamed epithets as our foes rounded the bases. Other people’s fathers declared me anathema from the stands. On the way home, my parents promised me those other fathers didn’t mean what they said. We stopped at the thrift store for a plastic brontosaurus and a book about a curly-haired girl who saved the world when the world wasn’t paying attention. The coach accepted my resignation. I did not expect sports would ever have me back. I did not know I had something necessary.

I decided to become a sports fan because enthusiasm was the admission I could afford. Everything you’ve ever loved is relevant in the bleachers. My exuberance was a transferable skill. I had experience rooting for long shots like Jesus and Emily Dickinson and all the stray cats who had no names until I called them Confetti or Andromeda. From childhood, I erupted in pompom poetics over every win, from the bus driver’s chrysanthemum of curls to my mother’s garlic ditalini. I knew how to love things simply because they were ours. Even the sunset was practice.

I decided to become a sports fan because my eyelids got heavy. My neck ached from staring up instead of out. I could not catch a sign from overhead. It must have been the angels’ off-season. My vision grew blurry. But before the buzzer, my three youngest coworkers arrived arrayed in orange. Solomon in all his splendor was never so neon. They informed me that “we” were in the playoffs. We had not made it this far in fifty years. We were obligated to celebrate.

I asked if we were favored to win. They did not know the answer, only that this was a day for festal garments. They wrapped me in a hoodie as bright as God’s first tangerine. This prodigal fan had no plea and many questions. I learned that we are a hockey team called The Flyers. We glide across ice on blades as thin as Communion wafers. I confirmed details about sticks, pucks, and hand-to-hand combat.

I decided to become a sports fan because sports fans are glad that you are here and I am here and we are all here together. It is the community where membership is awarded to all who arrive. Yesterday, you were a stranger, and today people hug you in the hallway and paint your fingernails orange at lunch. More vital than any score is the waxing body of “we.” For four quarters, we all have the same name. We are children of one city. If we win, the city may grease the electric poles so we will not climb them. This, too, is reason to rejoice.

I decided to become a sports fan because I must rejoice. The neighbors who cancel our votes and the tax collectors and the priests and the googly-eyed mascot of indeterminate species and the cool kids and other people’s fathers are all in this thing with me. It does not matter if I understand the liturgy of fouls or fourth downs. I can fumble every ball so long as I believe. God inhabits exuberance. The Breath resides in cheers. Bleachers look like basilicas from above. The nosebleed section is not much lower than the angels. I decided to become a sports fan because they will have me.

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Angela Townsend (she/her) works for a cat sanctuary. She is an eleven-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the winner of The Iowa Review’s Tim McGinnis Award and West Trade Review's 704 Prize for Flash Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Blackbird, Chicago Quarterly Review, JMWW, The Offing, SmokeLong Quarterly, and trampset.